Broken
by Hatter of Madness
Summary: Now she had rain pouring down on the closest thing she had to a roof over her head with the knowledge that her makeshift house would collapse at any minute, not sure of what to do with her life. T for language/plot.
1. Why?

**~*~Broken~*~  
by Hatter of Madness**

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Rain was the worst for Sam. During the rain she had to try to stay warm when all she had was a tiny little jacket, a ripped pair of jeans, a pair of Converse that should have long been since discarded, a plaid shirt that was way too big on her, a pair of gloves (hobo style), and a scarf. And the wind always made it worse. It was times like these that she had almost wished she _hadn't_ dropped out of Ridgeway...when she wished she had accepted Rodney's offer of a promise ring (even if it _had_ been ripped off)...when she wished she had gone to Carly with her problems...when she wondered what had ever happened to iCarly...when she wished she had told Freddork the truth.

She thought about all of this while struggling to stay warm. She looked again at the little metallic cup in her hands. It was so cold it was almost like it had been frozen into her hands. There was still only five dollars and sixteen cents. In all of Seattle, only a few people have given her money. And it still only added up to five dollars and sixteen cents.

It wasn't even enough to get one meal. She was thin now, too, too thin. Not that she was fat before, or even had a little excess fat. No, Samantha Puckett had always been thin. But starvation made it worse. Living on the streets in a cardboard box that might not make it through a little rain. Well, a "little rain"—that was the understatement of the year. It was pouring. All Sam could do for warmth was curl up into a tiny little ball and hope that somehow, a miracle would occur.

At the time, dropping out seemed like the right thing to do. After all, Carly and Daniel were always making out and were always together and Freddie and Sam just faded into the background. Who was Daniel, anyway? He just showed up out of nowhere and started dating Carly and Freddie and Sam were forced to watch their best friend turn from a good, sweet, innocent girl into a total bitch. And Spencer only fueled the fire. Pretty soon, he determined that Sam was a bad influence on Carly. That was why she was sneaking around behind his back, he decided. That was why her straight A's dropped fast to Carly barely managing to get C's. And then there was when Sam logged onto Facebook, ignoring the friend request from Jonah (as _if_ she'd actually talk to him again), and saw this on her homepage:

_Carlotta Shay went from being "single" to "engaged"._

First off, Sam didn't even know "Carly" was short for anything. Second, this was when Carly wasn't even a _junior. _She wanted to kill Daniel. Soon there were several comments congratulating Carly and talking about what she should wear to the wedding and everything. Sam thought Carly should wear a shirt to school that said "TRAITOR". She didn't voice this thought; the popular opinion was that Carly and Daniel were meant to be together and that Carly would make a cute "Mrs. McElwain" and everything.

Then there was the time Carly called Sam from some stupid party that Daniel's friend Brian had thrown asking if Sam could give her a lift home. Sam got these phone calls often. Even though her mom was—well—her mom, she was a pretty cool parent in that when Sam got her lisence, she bought her daughter a car. It was a blue 2004 Opel Tigra with a twintop, whatever that was. Sure, it was a few years old, but it ran and hey, Sam didn't have to keep asking for rides. She was a pretty cautious driver. So when she got that call from Carly, she was shocked. Carls..._drinking?_

She picked her up anyway, and Carly climbed in. She _seemed_ sober. "You alright?" Sam asked.

"Fine," Carly said, looking out the window. "Danny was drinking, and I don't trust Brian enough to give me a ride."

"So you're going to let your boyfriend drive home drunk?" Sam asked. She may have been stupid, but she wouldn't have let her boyfriend drive home under the influence.

Carly shrugged. "He's probably just gonna crash there anyway." Sam sighed, starting the car. They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Carly said, "Sam? Can we talk?"

"Sure." She didn't look up, instead focusing on the road before her.

"You know we don't talk that often," Carly said, "and even though I promised to take you to a Cuttlefish concert a while ago, I went with Danny instead."

"Where are you going with this, Shay?"

Carly paused. "I don't want you on iCarly anymore."

Sam nearly slammed on the brakes. "What?"

"I don't want you in my apartment either. I just don't want to see you around and I don't think Freddie does either. We don't like you."

"Oh? Who's 'we'? You and your boyfriend?"

"Me, Danny, Brian, Roger, Kat, Justin..."

"Oh, look, all of your boyfriend's friends." Sam pulled over. "Fine. Don't want to be my friend, then get out of my car."

Carly hesitated, then climbed out and slammed the door, immediately pulling out her cell phone. Sam didn't care who she called for a ride. She never wanted to see Carly Shay again. A little while later, after distancing herself from Carly and Freddie and _Danny_, Rip Off Rodney had asked her out. She didn't know why Rodney had asked her, but she didn't question it. Though she knew she was just going to get hurt, she agreed. By junior year, Rodney had tried to give her a promise ring, to which Sam declined and broke off the relationship. She decided to drop out of school, and, eventually, ran away.

It had been fun at first—as fun as it could be without your best friend there to talk to...or any friends, really—but after a while, when she got kicked out of her apartment, she didn't know what to do or what she had ever found "fun". There was only one thing: Regret.

Now she had rain pouring down on the closest thing she had to a roof over her head with the knowledge that her makeshift house would collapse at any minute, not sure of what to do with her life or where to go or how to survive. She didn't know where her next meal was coming from. She missed Frothy, the stupid rabid cat she had; she missed her nice, warm bed; she missed her eccentric mother, because at least someone cared about her...

She missed having a future.

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**I don't know where I'm going with this. This is my first iCarly fanfiction since a fail of a fic I posted on my last account, TohruROX2221. If you recognize that name, you probably know which fic I am speaking of. Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, high school is kicking my ass. I currently have another C- in Geometry. I'm really trying, but I just don't get it. I have to go to _tutoring!_ FUCK. (Pardon my French...) So um. I'd like to make friends on this site or get better known or _something_. I'm so bored with life right now and I'm sick of all this drama at school about me. I'm not even popular yet everyone knows my name now. ._. People are such asjfselfj. So I'll stop rambling and let you figure out if this is actually worth reviewing/favoriting/alerting. Kthxbai.**

**-Hatter of Madness**


	2. Rain

The rain, which used to be such a soothing sound to Sam, was now a nightmare in the making. The thought that at any second it would eat away at the only thing she had to protect her was a scary one. She didn't like the outlook of her house collapsing, even if it wasn't exactly a house. No, a cardboard box was not a home. A cardboard box made an excellent fort when you were seven. Or even a great storage system for all of your video games when you were twelve. But when you were nineteen and not entirely certain of where your next meal was coming from, a cardboard box was misery, just a replacement for what you lacked:

A home.

Because of the rain, there wasn't a single kind soul who took pity on her by stopping to put a few coins in her dilapidated cup. The stupid little mug had dents everywhere in the metallic surface, and it grew cold easily. There wasn't much she could do with the stupid thing, or the money the stupid thing earned her. Regardless of the rain, however, there was hardly a kind soul who stopped anyway. Most people felt bad for her (living in a cardboard box in Seattle wasn't exactly a favorable position to be in) but not bad enough to put even a penny into her mug. After all, they thought, she deserved it for doing it to herself. She probably drank herself broke, they thought. She must have bought one too many packages of cigarettes, they assumed.

But no, Samantha Puckett was not an alcoholic, nor was she a drug addict. Samantha Puckett was a girl who was lost without her best friend, a girl who had made one bad decision, a girl who had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. And it was freazing cold inside the stupid little box.

Sam curled up into a ball for the second time. No matter what position she tried, concrete was just not comfortable. If only she knew where a homeless shelter was, she could go there. They could give her warmth, a roof, food...if only for a little while...

No, a shelter meant giving up. It meant that Sam was giving into the difficult lifestyle. It meant that she couldn't handle it anymore. It meant that she was weak. And Samantha Puckett was _not _weak. Under no circumstances would Samantha Puckett do _anything _that would make her seem weak. Yeah, she was using her scarf as a pillow, and, if she could get her hands on one, a newspaper as a blanket. She would use rocks to weigh down the flaps of the box so that it wouldn't fly away during the night or in the rain, like at those moments. But she could live. She saved up her money until she had enough to get two solid meals, and she'd make each last for a while, just to have food. A lot of stores had grown used to seeing her come in, asking for two meals but never putting on any weight; at any rate, she was losing it more than gaining it.

But this was what she had to do to survive. She had to do this to _live._

Soon, sleep came the better of her. Her body was aching with drowsiness and her eyes were itching to close. Even though there was cold nipping at her all the time, she took the scarf off her neck and immediately got goosebumps. Not that she didn't have them before. The removal of that single article of clothing aggravated the bumps on her skin to the point where it felt like she would burst. Ignoring the goosebumps, she carefully folded up the flimsy material into a wad, putting it on the ground and using the dryest newspaper as a blanket. She had to rest, if only for a little while...

She couldn't have been asleep for more than two minutes when she felt it.

_Splat._

She opened her eyes, looking up, startled. There was water on her face, she was sure of it. But everything seemed to be fine. _Go back to sleep,_ she urged herself. And again, her eyes were closed. She didn't even fall asleep when it came back again.

_Splat._

She looked up again. At first, nothing. Then—

_Splat._

There was a leak in the roof—well, the flaps of the box. Sam blinked once in confusion. Why now? It wasn't even raining that hard. There had once been a storm and the box held up. But now, a little drizzle and it was leaking? She quickly crumpled up a page of a damp newspaper—just wet enough so that it would stick—and put it over the hole.

But soon, water trickled through that, too. No matter how much paper she added, water still found its way into the box. And Sam was giving up patience. What else could she do? The only other thing she could possibly think of was putting a paper on top of the box to keep the rain out, but even _that_ might not work.

_Well,_ Sam thought, _here goes nothing..._

She crawled out of her 'home' quickly, moving aside a rock holding down the box for just a moment, grabbing a piece of newspaper as she went and putting it over the hole. Just as she was certain it would hold, she started to go back inside... But a stupid gust of wind blew it away, into the distance, the rain, the wet, the cold... And now more than ever, she was homeless.

Not afraid of who saw, Sam curled up on the ground, bringing her knees to her eyes, and began to cry.

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**I honestly don't believe the traffic I got for the first chapter of this. I know where I want to go with it (if you see the two characters it should be obvious) but just...wow. I got one favorite, three alerts, three reviews, and over one hundred hits. That's incredible. I thought people would leave a whole bunch of negative comments but...wow. Thank you! Also if you paid attention to my last A/N, you'd know that I'm struggling with geometry. Well on Friday (3/18/11), I took a test in geometry. Today on Monday (3/21/11), I go the test back...92%. :D That's the best test grade I've _ever_ gotten in geometry. I'm so happeh~! But I'd be happehier if you reviewed. ;3**

**-Hatter of Madness**


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